Former Amazon HR Exec Says You Can't be a Manager Without This Step

It’s not easy to become a leader. You are first evaluated on your technical expertise, then you are judged for your people management skills. Not to mention working all day at your desk and spending hours after hours in company meetings.

For many new managers, this is a jarring transition. But Bahrath Jayaraman said it should not be so.

Jayaraman is the vice president of people at financial technology company Paxos. Before Paxos, he has worked in human resources at major companies such as Amazon and Facebook. Jayaraman has shared several ideas to better prepare employees to become managers.

Informal experience in management

One of these ideas is to give that person some informal experience in management. Jayaraman said “Never make anyone a people manager without making them a mentor for a new hire on your team first. Set very clear expectations that, as a mentor, their role is to help them navigate the company effectively and help them understand where they’re blocked.”

Jayaraman also proposed another option which is to organise groups of people who have expressed desire to be managers and send them to go through more formal training. Every few months, a new group of would-be managers might discuss and review case studies, or work with mentors and coaches.

“When people go through that and then say, ‘Hey, this is not what I thought I would do as a manager; I’m not sure that’s for me,’ that is a great outcome.”

The one issue is that, at some of these companies, people-management seems like a natural next step in their careers, even if they don’t like managing people.

“You hire adults, you treat them like adults,” Jayaraman said. “You tell them what it means to be a manager and let them make a decision about whether they want to do it or not, which is probably the most effective way to sort of minimize some of the early mistakes that a lot of people make.”

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This article is based on "An HR exec who's worked at Facebook and Amazon says no one should become a manager without taking a key step" by Shana Lebowitz